Communication

To say that my lover and I communicate well is an understatement. It is very freeing to know that there is nothing that I cannot bring into the forum for discussion between us. Better to admit we are not mind-readers and instead reach out to each other with eyes and hands and mouths, straining to bridge the gap between Self and Other, to know, and to be known. Sometimes it is very intense, especially the struggle to find words to express the complexity and ambivalence of past relationships.

I accept that my current state of being could best be characterized as "dazed" and he does too. He worries a bit, but he knows that when I have them, I will reach out to him with words. In the meantime, I reach out to him with my heart, and his eyes meet mine and he is there, smiling gently at me, his arms slipping around me, his scent enveloping me. I rest my cheek on his shoulder and brush his neck with my lips.

"Still no word," he said. It was not a question.

The last email from My Beloved that had any real content was on the 12th. Since then, two "emails from the open road", one short and apologetic, one short and about... coffee. I've mailed him in the interim, expressing a willingness to work on carrying our heart-connection forward in our lives if he is willing to be open and vulnerable with me, as I am with him. No real word back, nothing substantive. The analytical side of me recognizes that he is probably still processing and taking care with his responses, but the feeling side of me wishes, if that were the case, that he would at least say as much.

Too restless to do sitting meditation, I did walking instead, along the stretch of Ocean Beach. The sun was warm, the wind cold, and the sand was a bit of both, and damp, underfoot. I focussed on the physical dynamics of walking, enjoying the animal-body I inhabit, appreciating it for all it does without need for conscious oversight. I allowed myself to feel my body, to feed my awareness of it, to notice the places where tension had accumulated, and to explore the emotions the little knots held as I caused them to relax. My body is the bridge between my inner and outer worlds, and my mind the road, sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy.

The irony of meditation is that struggling with the chatter of my mind puts the clarity and simplicity I seek farther and father out of reach.  Best to accept the chatter, to notice it without judging it, or myself. My ego-self struggles, sometimes even flails about, but my spiritual self is balanced, calm, content. To touch it, I have only to cease identifying with the ego-self and its chatter.

What will be, will be. I released the anxiety and anguish into the wind for the second time in the same day, zipped up my coat, and drove home with the top down, drove home to my lover, who met me at the door with sympathetic eyes and a warm hug. The best communication of all :)

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Love lost, love found

November already! Wow. It has been a year since I left Portland for San Francisco. And while I miss my friends, and the life I had up there, I have no regrets. I love being near my family and friends here, and I'd be a fool to complain about living in San Francisco, now wouldn't I?

Halloween would have been Tammy's 40th birthday. This one was a big contrast to the one last year, when I had a friend visiting from Denmark and after showing him around town I curled up in bed and cried. This year I poured a drink and imagined the party she would have had for herself at her nightclub. I imagined her shaking that wonderful ass of hers on the dance floor, her blond hair shining in the darkness. Bittersweet, and no tears this time. Time does heal... I can think of her without tears falling, though they still well up in my eyes now and then.

A friend of mine sent me a "Firsts Meme" on Facebook, and as I completed it, I dredged up old memories of my first best friend and my first kiss and my first love. I thought about the boy I first kissed, when I was 7 or 8, and who I did not see again for 8 years but became my first love, and certainly the only boy I loved when I was a teen. My childhood sweetheart. Everything was so sweet. I loved him. I always have. I never quite understood how things dissolved between us. So as I was filling out that meme, I looked up his name on Facebook. There are lots of people with his name, but only he has his face. It is the same face. And so I sent him a message.

Minutes later he responded and then we were chatting away, filling each other in on our lives. And within minutes we both had answers to the questions that had gone unanswered for over 20 years. Parents. Our parents had thwarted us. My dad called his mom and told her I was 'late'. She in turn told him. He never heard anything again, so he thought I'd had an abortion. Lots of pain and sadness and feeling stupid on both our parts. And so it goes with teens. Our parents have stayed in touch all these years, and despite both of us asking our parents about each other, they never, in all these years, provided us the means to get in touch with each other. He's known for years that I was in Oregon, and tried to find me. It wasn't until I left Oregon that my father told me he was there. Funny that. And Hooray for Facebook!

And now, back to work. I've got a podcast to release tomorrow, and a naughty story to finish.

Sitting here in the little courtyard, the sky is incredibly blue and the sun warm, but the trees are losing their leaves anyway. M was just leaning his head in my lap, and I rubbed his neck and forehead, mussing up his hair just before he has to go off to a meeting. The days are so much shorter now. I think I'll go to Ocean Beach tomorrow. I want to crunch sand between my toes. I want to taste the wind with my skin.

Want more Silkenvoice?
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My Blog: Silkenvoice.blogspot.com
My Podcast: Audiosensual.blogspot.com

To Sir, With Love

Within an hour of his death, my cousin and I poured some whiskey and drank a toast to Granddad, a toast taken from the title of the book I'd been reading to him the past two days. To Sir, with love. May he rest in peace.


He was waiting for me to come to him, and his decline once I arrived was stunning in its swiftness. He kept his faculties the entire time, and he died peacefully at home, with loved ones at his side. It has been my role in this family to help ease passings, and perhaps because I have finally fully embraced that role, this passing was the most peaceful yet. I was in a place of love and acceptance, and every thought, every word, every touch was loving and grateful. Thank you for letting me take care of you, it is a priviledge, I told him, after he apologized for his incontinence and need to be cleaned up. Its ok, you can let go now, I projected my thoughts at him. I'll be here to care for the living.


My aunt home from work, I made sure he was comfortable, and then I lay down for a nap, my first bit of sleep in 36 hours. I was unsurprised when my aunt awakened me 90 minutes later to say he was gone. I rose and held his hand and watched the last of his breath leave his lungs and I felt so radiant inside. I could not help but smile through my tears, fully at peace, both with his death, and that of my sister.


The year began with a death and now it ends with one. Another few days and it will be Solstice, when the dying of the light is transformed into renewal. A new year, with new beginnings, and new endings. I can live with that knowledge, just as I can live with the uncertainty of details. Life is a brush that paints in broad, sweeping strokes. When I look ahead, I can see the outline, the dips and curves. But the details, ah, those are completed in the fullness of each moment -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Being sad

She looks at me from her frame, an antique art-deco frame, her head slightly tilted, her blonde hair tossed by the wind. At home, I can see her from my bed, and at work, from my desk. She is my hero and my reminder that life is too short and must be lived fully. She would have been 39 this year, on Halloween.

I miss her so much I ache with it, and tears make typing difficult. 9 months since Tammy died. I feel like some part of me is missing, something important, something I've got to find, to remember, to bring with me, to... something. I've been parturient with grief and now I feel it rising in me, seeking exit from my body. I've never given birth. I wonder, is it like this?

I feel sometimes like I've got to live the rest of my life and hers. She was fearful and fearless. She had huge courage and she accomplished great things and I feel I can do no less in honour of her memory. I think of her and smile. I remember her smile, that little girl's shy smile, and her way of laughing that made people feel included. I remember that day at Cannon Beach, the day I snapped that photo. I can close my eyes and smell the air. I can hear the birds, feel the chill in the wind and the sand in my shoes. I remember how thin she was, how little she ate, how easily she tired. And I remember how she had such enthusiasm. She was on fire. She wanted to live and go and do. But she never really learned how to 'be', my sister.

I remember her as a child, napping in the hammock under a pine tree my grandparents planted the year my mother was born. I can smell the scent that the redwood forest has, the scent that permeated my childhood summers. I remember the wind rocking the child in that hammock, and the way her hair stuck out in all directions and her mouth fell open just a bit as she slept. I remember the way her skin smelled of Ivory soap, and how her hair smelled of Breck creme rinse, and how her hands were always dirty. Tammy was never afraid to get her hands dirty.

And I miss her so much I ache with it. I raised her. She was my baby as much as she was my sister. And now she is gone, and that is ok. It has to be ok, right? I mean, we are all born to die, and she always said she'd never live to see 50 and she was right. She had a better sense of her own mortality than most. I got a taste of it in May and I get it now, get that Life is short, but more than that, get that My Life is short and it is meant to be lived fully and honoured fully.

And so I grieve, here on my bed, sitting cross-legged, looking into the photo, into the window of the past, honouring my feelings.... and being... being sad. And that is good. Tears wash away the strain of holding in the grief and that is good, too.

It's all good. Even missing those who have moved on to whatever comes next. Sometimes I forget to remember that. Miss ya Sis.

Trading anger for peace

I used to be angry. Not an apparent anger--I wasn't irritable, abusive, bellicose or argumentative--but I could be stubbornly contrarian and there was this well of cold rage that sometimes surged upwards and radiated from me as a form of intensity that caused people to take a step (or two) backwards. I was told that I had this calm demeanor, but sometimes my eyes had flames in them, and I radiated an intensity that let people know I was displeased.

But I'm not angry anymore. And what is interesting is that the people who have come into my life the past few years don't believe that I've ever been anything but a very peaceful, loving person. I can tell them that I used to be introverted and angry and averse to attention and they don't believe me. One person, whom I've known just a year, even argued with me about my basic personality type etc. Eventually we agreed that I'm becoming what is possible for me, rather than being limited/stunted by the attitudes and expectations of the past.

I've gotten sexier, too. My appearance hasn't changed much. I don't have this great body or stunning good looks, but nonetheless, I'm more comfortable in my skin, more comfortable with honoring my feelings and being however I want to be in the moment, more peaceful and powerful, and somehow that makes me more attractive on a very fundamental basis. It is wonderful!

How did this happen? Therapy? Yes, but it only took me so far. Self-help books? A few, but there is a difference between reading a thing and 'getting' it. Self-help workshops and seminars? Just one three-course curriculum that transformed how I thought about life.

What happened was, I got a handle on the past and how it ran my life. I made my peace with it, which freed me to live in the present. But before I could do that, I had to understand the Power of Choice. That was the first major thing, and it was a moment of enlightenment. I suddenly understood that I carried the past around like a bundle of burdens and that it was my choice to carry it around or set it down. And I learned that I could set it down and walk away, or I could pick it back up and hump it around until I was ready to let it go. That was freeing, knowing I had the choice, that I wasn't losing anything by putting the past down and leaving it where it belonged--in the past. And suddenly, it all clicked, and I was at peace. Truly, deeply, at peace.

The second breakthrough was that I accepted responsibility for my life, for the choices I had made that brought me where I was, and in so doing recognized that I could create my future by intentionally choosing it--by making choices with my goals in mind. I found this very empowering and today I celebrate the small victories that reveal the incremental progress I am making toward the future I am creating for myself and my life.

The third was the breakthrough I had regarding 'fear'. I recognized that I was afraid. And I learned that everyone else is afraid, too, on a very basic level. And I learned that the difference between people who live ordinary lives and those who live extraordinary lives is that people living extraordinary lives acknowledge their fears and act anyway. They don't allow themselves to be stopped by fear or circumstance. They, to borrow Nike's trademark phrase, Just Do It. And so do I.

Fourth, I came to understand that mistakes happen, that mistakes themselves are often acts of creation, and that it really is ok to make mistakes. I am no longer paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes, and I no longer get angry with myself for making mistakes. I accept responsibility for them, do my best to clean up any messes and apologize where necessary, and then let it go and move on.

And lastly--I stopped taking Life personally. Life happens. It happens to everyone, not just me, and if I choose to take it personally-- if I'm always asking "Why does shit always happen to me?"-- then I'm choosing to see myself as a victim of life. And that will not do. When I stopped taking life personally I started living it fully and powerfully. I stopped feeling angry and helpless and stuck. I stopped sitting on the sidelines. I grabbed hold of Life with both hands and started taking big bites, started shaping it to meet my ends, and realized my own freedom. Today, I fully understand that my thoughts and attitudes are causal, creative forces in my life, and I get to choose what I think about my life and how I approach it. And as a woman thinketh, so she is.

Death, peace, and beauty

So.... my mother died six years ago, just before the September 11th attack. I was struggling with grief and guilt and travel arrangements when the towers fell, and the national decent into an orgy of televised mourning and sabre-rattling derailed both my grieving process and my attempts to get to Hawaii to deal with my mother's remains. It was 10 days from her death before I successfully reached Hilo. It was 4 years from her death before I successfully grieved her.

Today I mark her death with surprising equanimity, considering all the 9/11 and Osama bin Ladin / al Qaeda media coverage. I've made my peace with myself, with her, with the past that came between us. I carry within me now a whole new sense of self-acceptance as a result of that peace-making: the roles of the unfit mother and the ungrateful daughter were not true to who we were, but they were real to us in the context in which we experienced each other. It is a powerful thing, being able to make such distinctions.

In laying her ghost to rest, I finally grew up.

I am applying the lessons learned the past two years toward dealing with my sister's situation. She will live to see her 38th birthday next month. Most likely, anyway. I am finding it difficult to live powerfully in the face of her suffering, but where I can, I am choosing not to focus on the helplessness which this situation is engendering in me. I am an adult now, truly adult in my emotions and thought processes and actions. I accept--no, I choose--What Is. And having chosen What Is, I am at peace with it. I am at peace with it, and that peace creates an opening to create a future in which I remember my sister as a vital woman who lived a full life, instead of one in which I continually mourn her as someone who died much too soon.

My relationships with others, my sense of connectedness, is the measure by which the beauty of life is understood. And the beauty of death.

Great wisdom through painful experience

Our day-to-day lives are a series of experiences chained together. Something happens, we respond, the next thing happens, and we respond, and on and on. Some of the experiences are memorable, and some are not. Some have a huge impact and some do not. And some impacts we are unaware of on a conscious level, but they are still there, powerful motivators in the unconscious realm.

Recently, a friend of mine has started facing some nasty past memories that have created blocks in life as well as a decade of nightmares. The memories are a decade old now, but they are resurfacing, fresh as new wounds, and consequently, my friend is experiencing crippling anxiety and self-doubt.

In an attempt to help my friend make sense of it all and choose transformation and transcendence over trauma and tragedy, I sent the following email. In re-reading it, I decided I would post it here, on my blog. I expect that what I've written might help others make the distinction between their experiences (ie what happened) and the interpretation of those experiences (ie the meanings we give them and the stories we create around them) and hopefully find healing as a result.

[...] From my own experience, I've realized that the memories of What Happened are not the worst part. No, What Happened isn't the worst part at all. The Meaning is. You see, when things Happen, we try to make sense of them, we interpret them, and in doing so we give them Meaning. We give the things that happen meaning, and when our minds fold those things away as memories, it collapses the event and the meanings we gave it together as a unit. And when we are reluctant to remember something, it is often not the event that we fear so much.... but rather, what we made it mean about ourselves and the world. It is not what happened that we fear. It is the meaning we gave it.
But why?
Why?
This is harder to get. Our ego-identities are founded on meanings. On the meanings we give our experiences, on the meanings we give our lives as a result of those experiences. Remember how I keep telling you that you are not the voice in your head? (By voice, I mean that voice that says, What voice? I don't have a voice in my head.) Your ego-identity is the voice in your head. And it likes being there. It wants to survive. In some ways its survival is dependent upon those fears and anxieties that have resulted from Its interpretation of your experiences and the stories its made up about What Happened. They feed it, give it things to talk about--all that negative conversation in your head. The ego wants to keep What Happened and The Interpretation of What Happened collapsed together, because if you actually realized that What Happened is simply what happened and has no meaning in and of itself except what you gave it---well, you might be free of those fears and anxieties. And then your ego-identity is uncreated. Part of its foundation is gone. And then what would it use to stay in control? Your ego-identity does not fear What Happened so much as it fears being undone. You are afraid to lose who you think you are. You are afraid to lose the identity you have fabricated for yourself out of the meanings you have made of your experiences. In those moments, it helps to remember that who you are is not the ego-identity that you've created as a result of your experiences. Who you are is that Consciousness that is aware of the negative conversation of your Ego.

Life is a conversation, love. It is a conversation between your Ego-identity and your Self. It is a conversation between the stories you've made up about yourself and the stories you've made up about the World. Its not Real. Little of it is. What Happened was Real. Your fear is Real. But the meaning you gave it is Not Real. So what you are afraid of is Not Real. And what you are afraid of, of losing yourself, is not real either. You are afraid of losing your illusions about yourself. You are afraid of losing the stories you have made up about yourself... you are afraid of losing all those reasons to think you are a horrible awful person, all those reasons to give your ego something to talk about, to keep its hold over you with all that negative conversation in your head.

Those who love you, we keep telling you what is Real: That you are a wonderful, amazing person worthy of love. But you cannot hear us, you do no believe us. Something in you, your ego, has convinced you that you've somehow snowed us. Deceived us. That some day the lies or stories that have convinced us that you are a Good Person will unravel and we will see you for what you think you are. An imposter. Something defiled. But in order for something to be defiled, it has to be sacred, too. And you are sacred. And one day--one day I hope you not only recognize that you are Sacred, but that you will laugh at the absurdity of it all. You are Sacred, and the one who is convinced that you are Defiled is you. You are Sacred, and you have Defiled yourself.

Wake up. Wake up my friend. Come out into the Light. You are Sacred. You are not the meanings that you have given your experiences. You are Sacred, and you are Loved.

The tides of life take another sandcastle

More sad news this weekend. One I love is on hospice. I will likely be attending her funeral before the end of the year. It is agony, knowing this, knowing this on the one year anniversary of my failed attempt to commit her to medical care involuntarily. She's lived longer that I expected, though I don't think few would consider her existence anything resembling 'living'. Ah well.

The nice thing is that I had someone at hand to hold me after I'd gotten the news about her condition. He lay with me on my bed and held me, and kissed my forehead and my eyelids, and soothed me with his hands and his mouth and his words. Genuine intimacy in combination with vulnerability has been a balm for the pain of loss. It has opened doors within us both.

Elie Wiesel said, "When a door closes, another opens. It is the same door." Life, pain, death, loss... None of it has any meaning except what I give it. What will I make her death mean about her life, my life, the world, the legal system, the medical establishment? What will I make the love I feel for him mean, I wonder. Even as something ends, there is a beginning. It is cyclical, ebbing and flowing like that tide, and the lives we're building are castles of sand. It means nothing, in and of itself--it means only what I make it mean. Soon the tides of life and death will claim another sandcastle, and in that clearing, something new will arise. Let it be Hope, I beg. Let it be Hope.

Rock in a sea of change

It is August, and yet I can feel autumn coming, I feel it in the crispness of the morning air. I see it in the tops of the vine-maples, whose green leaves are just starting to blush yellow-orange-red. Autumn brings change and usually I welcome it. But these days I feel like I am under siege with changes. I feel like a rock at sea and yet in sight of the shore, with waves rushing and splashing around me. I know I am a rock, and I know that it would take a lot to undermine me, but being an island of peace in a sea of change is challenging. Those I love are thrashing about, battling issues of health, relationships, work and finances. And I have my own battles, too. Change is coming. I'm not sure where I'll be a month from now. All I can do is choose what comes, whether it is what I would prefer or not. Choose it, and choose to live powerfully in the face of the uncertainty, absurdity, and breathtaking beauty that is life.

Free-spirit

"It is easy for you to say, you were raised to be a free-spirit," said a friend I've made this past year. He had asked my thoughts on the imminent 'big step' he and his girlfriend of 18 months were about to embark upon: moving in together. The last girlfriend he lived with drove him nuts in short order and he was reluctant to put himself into the same position again. I told him I could understand that all too well, but at the same time, that I considered the practice of using past experience to predict relationship outcomes to be a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. I told him to take the reasonable precautions and then relax and be open to the possibilities in this relationship, which has nothing to do with the old one, unless he makes it so. His comment about it being easy for me to say made me smile. The road to this place has been far from easy, as my closest friends will attest.


For all that I grew up around a bunch of carefree hedonists, there was little stability, consistency, or parenting. In one form or another I raised myself, four sisters, and three parents. My parents were young, self-absorbed, and oblivious to the danger they put their daughters in. I learned first-hand what could happen, and spent my teen years vigilantly trying to protect my siblings from predators. I developed stress-responses and habits, expectations and fears, that stood me in good stead for survival, but handicapped me when I attempted to join the mainstream, to attempt to seem 'normal', to develop and sustain romantic relationships. When I was 18 I returned from a few months in Europe and developed an inexplicable aversion to strangers and unfamiliar places that grew until I was afraid to leave my home. The world of possibilities was terribly large, and my experience of it quite dark in ways. I wanted to try to make sure that whatever I did, whoever I met, created only positive outcomes. I was young and foolish, and terribly controlling. Eventually, I overcame the fear of people, but the fear of the unknown, unknowable, and uncertain became the core of my existence. I did not feel afraid--I was afraid. I did my best to cope, and I grew in and changed in spurts and often lost as much ground as I gained. But I kept working at it, trying to learn what I needed to do to reach for the next rung on the ladder. Striving to become more fully alive and aware, more fully me. All the while keeping in mind that as difficult and slow a process as it seems, even plants can climb ladders.


Just three years ago I was in a miserable relationship that should have ended years earlier but did not, for reasons I cannot recall. We rarely had sex, argued often, had different wants, needs, desires. But we loved each other, and it seemed we thought that was enough. I suppose we preferred being miserable together to being miserable alone. Admittedly, it was a difficult time for me--four people I loved died in as many years and I think I could not face any more loss. When that relationship ended I went into therapy, determined to learn new coping mechanisms and break old patterns, determined to address the issues and complaints my partners had given voice to over the years. And in the therapy- process I chose meditation instead of medication, and did the hard internal work, and read and explored and conversed and contemplated and slowly came to the realization that nearly everything I need I already have within me, and that fear of loss, of death and uncertainty and the 'other', is natural. But rather than deny those fears, rather than sublimate or ridicule them, I realized that it was best to recognize fear for what it was, and allow myself to feel it--let it fill me and flow out of me and let another emotion fill me--love, hope, joy. One day I realized that while I will never be rid of fear, I do not have to be ruled by it.


And I have to remind myself of this daily. I no longer tell myself not to be afraid, or to stop being silly. I remind myself that it is ok to feel afraid. I tell myself that it is ok to feel afraid, but it is not ok to use fear as an excuse not to live every day as fully as I can, to use it as an excuse to avoid embracing the fullness of life. It is not easy. I am flattered that, for all I feel that I am struggling and flailing around, I am somehow managing to meet the challenges of life with enough grace that others think it comes easily to me. But at the same time, I admit that it is coming easier to me--more and more I find myself practicing acceptance and facing each moment with equanimity and spontaneity. They are coming more easily. And perhaps one day I really will be a free-spirit. Who knows? For now I'll savor feeling free-spirited every moment that I can.

Can you see the flower's singing?

No? It is clearing its crimson throat, preparing to raise its head to the sun and sing the nectar forth...

One of my primary goals when I entered therapy two years ago was conquering my attention-aversion. I've come a long way. I no longer cringe when my boss or colleague praises me in front of others. I am learning how to accept compliments with fewer attempts at deflection or self-deprecation. That feeling of needing to hide is diminishing in intensity. I've been putting myself out there--dating, writing, recording--and accepting the attention and feedback with as much grace as I can muster. Some days are better than others.

Recently I identified one of the triggers for my attention-aversion: the words "special", "talented" and "gifted". Most people associate "special" with good feelings. They like feeling special. Not so, me. When someone tells me I'm special, I feel suddenly wary. I find myself wondering, subconsciously, what they want.

I was at the local pub on Monday night, eating my favorite burger and sipping a beautiful microbrew porter. A commercial came on, and the voice-over actor said "What makes you special?" My reaction was immediate and vehement. My internal critic said "Nothing! I don't want to be special!" It shocked me. But I did not have time to examine it as I was in a social situation, so I marked it for contemplation at another time. I mentioned it to CD, and he reiterated that I was special, that I had such a gift for self-expression. I think he thought he was reassuring me, but his words made me choose to shy away from exploring it further. A few days later, in a chat, someone asked "When are you going to do another story? You have such talent!" Something in me cringed. I wanted to ignore his comment, but remembered to acknowledge it with a "thank you" instead.

Thursday night, talking with B, "special" came up and tears flooded my eyes--I felt suddenly, inexplicably sad. Trigger. And something about B's receptivity made it possible for me experience the trigger and trace it back. In that moment, eye-level with my psyche, I found it. She used to tell me I was special. Often. And like most children who fall prey to sexual predators, I blamed myself. I knew that it was something about me that made her want me. That something "special". And from that time forward, that word has been tainted, and any attentions ascribed to my being special or different or talented or gifted prompted instant withdrawal, an entering into "turtle mode".

Saturday morning I had conversation with B about what happened Thursday, abuut my understanding that I'm ready to process my aversion to "special", to lay it to rest and reclaim the word. And so I resolved to do so. But it was not enough. More was to come.

I rose this morning from dream-awareness, from that alpha state, cognisant of an internal dialogue-loop running in my mind "You've been renting space in your soul to a sexual predator for 26 years. Stop this."

Late this morning I spoke to CW. He's in Colorado Springs again. We talked for a while.
I commented to him that I'd noticed a change in him the past couple of weeks with regards to how he and I interact.
He asked what I meant.
I told him he appeared less bothered by my insistence on my independence, on my need to continue exploring and growing outside our relationship. He said he'd read some articles on gifted adults and it made it easier for him to understand and deal with me.
My knee-jerk response was "I'm not gifted."
He laughed. Loudly. "You most certainly are."
Remembering my conversation with B, remembering my intention to reclaim "special" and its related words, I stopped myself from arguing or withdrawing, and listened to him.
He said, "I stumbled across an article titled 'Can you hear the flowers sing?' and it made me think of you. I remembered you stopping us in the middle of the forest and saying 'Smell that? Can you smell the fungal mats growing?'"
I grinned, remembering his bafflement.
He said, "I have a better understanding of the challenges you face, not only with resolving your past, but in the present. I remind myself that you're not being intentionally perverse--that you are pushing at the boundaries that stifle you."
It was my turn to ask what he meant.
He said, "Social boundries, sensual boundaries, metaphysical boundaries. You are one of the most aware people I know. It makes you very sensitive to things most people don't sense. Including me."
Part of me was relieved that he seemed to have come to a place of acceptance. Part of me was wary. And then he said something that triggered me. Again.
He said, "Deny it all you want to, Kay. It won't change the fact that you are special--no--that you are exceptionally gifted."
Tears. Fuck. I cried and blabbered to him about my conversations with B, and the connotations that "special" carried for me. I wished very strongly that he was there to hold me. I wanted to press my face against his chest and breathe him into me. But he was in Colorado. So I forced myself to calm down and have a coherent conversation.

Later, he IM'd me a link to the article he'd mentioned, challenged me to read it and disagree that what it said applied to me.

And so I read it. The title resonated very strongly with me. The line in the article "no one else hears the flowers singing" resonated even more strongly. God, I know what that feels like, to experience the world differently than most. Sometimes it makes me despair, when I am excited by something I see/hear/taste/smell/feel and the ones I am with give me this dumb look and I try so hard to help them sense what I am feeling but they cannot. I think sometimes that is why I enjoy photography so much. Because sometimes I can get others to see not only what I am seeing, but how I am seeing it.

Anyway. Given some more time, I think I'll be laying another demon to rest, perhaps even embrace some more of the abandoned gifts that my shadow has been holding in safe-keeping for me.

understanding and acceptance

I find myself trembling on the edge of a realization. It is similar to that realization I had several months ago about questions and answers. That some questions cannot be answered, and that the answers aren't important--its the noticing, the asking, that matters--and the ability to let the questions go. Release.

And I am there now with 'understanding' and 'acceptance'. I am realizing I do not have to understand. I realized this as a result of my anguish over not understanding the suffering of those I love. There are things I may never be able to understand, no matter how smart I am, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many questions I ask.

If there is only one thing I have to understand, it is that I must accept that there are things I may never understand.

It sounds so simple, but its a tough lesson for me. I expect I will continue to struggle with it, but I've gone back to my meditation on practicing acceptance, and hopefully this time it will stick. In the meantime, there is nothing I would like more right now than to snuggle up to someone I love and trust and bask in the joy of just being with them. Unfortunately, all desired candidates are either otherwise occupied... or too far away.

Acceptance / Failure / Defeat

During an interview, Robert Schuller once asked Larry King "What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?"

That question struck a chord deep within me, and has guided my actions whenever fear of failure starts to rise within me.

This week began better than expected. She accepted that she was the cause of her condition, that 12 years of self-neglect had culminated in malnutrition so severe she was diagnosed with the 'wet' version of beri-beri and three bleeding ulcers, one of which requires surgery once she quits smoking.

It ended in a courthouse. I stood before a judge and stated that unless my sister gets the help she needs, I expect by the end of the year I'll get a phone call to come bury her. It was a last ditch effort. It failed. I expected it would, as it is difficult to force committals, but I had to try. I would not be able to live with myself if I didn't attempt everything I possibly could before going home.

Part of me is being hardnosed. I refuse to become part of the problem... I refuse to become another person enabling her to stay sick--and in doing so, help her die. I will not be another person watching her slowly spiral downwards. I will not be the wind beneath her wings as she does so. Is this Tough-love? Self-preservation? Or insanity? I went there to help her, but I soon realized that the help I could give was not the help she needed... and my sense of failure is tied to the fact that she is no closer to getting the help she really, desperately, needs...

My only hope is that my attempt to force her into the care she needs will make her angry enough to decide she wants to live, to prove me wrong. Even if it means she hates me for the rest of her life...at least she would live.

Only time will tell...

It is a beautiful afternoon here at Bradley Airport, maybe 75F, low humidity, few clouds. The sky is blue, a pastel blue so different from the azure skies at home. Trees everywhere, not a mountain in sight. I miss the volcanos. I miss Mt Hood and Mt St Helens. I miss my spot on the river, the scent of incense cedar and noble fir, the community garden full of flowers. In 24 hours I'll be ensconced in the comfort of my life, enjoying the beauty of my home--and waiting for that fateful phone call that means I will miss my sister for the rest of my life.

What would you attempt even if you knew you would fail?

Baths, online dating, and reconsiling polyamory

Click here for audio/podcast.
Bath night was delayed by one day, but it was worth it. The soap I ordered arrived, the delicious Roger&Gallet Gingember, which smells of ginger and sandalwood. While water filled the tub, I located one of my hinoki masu and opened the bottle of Taisetsu sake that had been chilling in the refrigerator. I lowered myself into the tub, leaned back, and closed my eyes. Ahhhh. The cold sake was a wonderful contrast to the hot water, and it did not take long for the combination to go to my head. No, indeed.

As I soaked, I thought about the past week or so, what I had experienced, what I had accomplished, and my interactions with my loved ones.

I had a date Monday night, a first-time date with someone I had chatted-up online. It was the first time I had done something like this, and I was a bit nervous because I've heard from women-friends that their first-dates with people they had met online rarely went well. But I wasn't terribly nervous, because M. and I clicked well, and I knew he wasn't one of those hard-up types looking for sex--he was too relaxed and comfortable with himself. So I called him and asked him if he wanted to come with me to Fry's, because I knew we both had things we wanted to pick up there. A very geek place to go on a first date, I suppose, but it worked.

When we met, the first thing I noticed about him was his smell. It was a good, healthy-male pheromone smell, with no discernable cologne. It was not an instant turn-on, but his scent was a bit distracting to me. The second thing was his hair. I could not resist the hair, I had to pull on one of the ringlets hanging down his back. The third thing was his energy, which meshed well with mine. We talked comfortably for the half hour drive there and back, and seeing as we had not run out of things to say, went for sushi. After sushi, his place for tea and conversation, and (surprise!) some lovely kisses. I really like him, and I look forward to seeng him again when he returns from his business trip.

Of course, C. knew I was going out with M., and of course I told him how well we hit it off. And of course, he was a bit irked. I told him that I'm not looking for a relationship and M. isn't looking for a relationship and seeing as how he (C.) travels so much and has such a full life with his sister's family when he is home, its not like me seeing M. occasionally (if I do) is going to interfere with my ability to see him.

This lead to a discussion last night about about how sad I find it that most people feel that adding another person to the 'loved' circle means less love for everyone in it. I asked him if the birth of his nephew Luke meant he loved his nephew Mark less. He said no.

I asked him if the birth of his sister when he was a child meant his parents loved him less. He said no, but there was an expression on his face that I recognized, because it expressed my own feelings when I was a child and they brought my infant sisters home. My family may not have loved me less, but from that day forward they sure paid a LOT more attention to my sisters than they did to me. They tried to explain to me that it had to do with being a baby, that I got the same sort of attention when I was a baby, that babies are helpless and need constant care... but the child in me only understood that she was feeling abandoned, and envious of the attention someone else was getting, attention that she wanted.

Love shared, my inner-child learned, means less for me. I think most adults, consciously or not, operate from that emotional place when it comes to relationships. And most never move from it, it seems. I've thought about how it is I managed to move past it. I talked to my therapist about it when I was going through so much angst over societal non-acceptance of my poly nature, and the conclusion I have reached is that it has to do with a capacity I have carried forward from childhood: the capacity to love.

Children love. It is what they do best. They do it with full trust and without reservation. When I hugged my niece last month for the first time in two years, I could feel the love in her. I thought it would burst from her skin if I squeezed her too hard. It pulsed in her, splattered me with messy kisses, flattered me with adoring eyes, warmed me with trusting limbs draped on me in sleep. She fell in love with me and I with her and neither of us loved anyone else less for it.

A child's capacity for love is limitless. And so is an adult's. Most just don't realize it. They still have a child's belief that time and attention equals proof of love, and love is limited by time and attention, and that competition for that limited commodity means less for them.

I soaked in the tub until the water was cool, thinking, wondering how to get across to people that love shared does not diminish. For me, Love defies the law of diminishing returns. The more I love, the more I can love. I haves o many amazing, wonderful people in my life. They enrich me, intoxicate me, challenge me. They are the hyacinths which feed my soul. If asked to choose amongst them, I would be unable to.

When I think about my last relationship, when I think about how it felt, not just being monogamous, but having my nature curbed and under attack, and living under the shroud of S's perpetual suspicion, I feel something akin to despair. I am sensual, tactile. I hug, I kiss, I touch, I smile at the people I care for. But for the most part, I had to reserve it all for S, who didn't like demonstrations of affection outside the bedroom. All those other avenues of love blockaded did not mean more love or security for S. The relationship slowly deteriorated as I withdrew more and more into myself, trying to avoid missteps that might be mis-interpreted by S. as sexual interest in someone else (Why don't you just go fuck him? was not an uncommon question).

For me, not being able to just love people the way I want (need?) to is a form of torture. I imagine what Yo-yo Ma would feel like in world in which he could only play one instrument, a single, much loved cello, despite the longing in his heart to touch other cellos and bring their voices to life. Or a chef whose only ingredient was chateaubriand. Or an artist who had the finest brushes and canvases...but only one colour of paint.

I love.
It is who I am.
It is what I do.

And C. (and a few others of my loved-ones), well, his adult mind understands my polyamorous nature. Its is inner-child that has trouble with it. Some people just can't get past their fear that sharing anything, especially someone's love, means less for them. I sure hope he can get past it though, because I'm done trying to curb the way I love in order to assuage a lover's fears. It makes me miserable. It diminishes me.

In the land of the blind...

Whatever I observe, whatever I experience, I embrace. There is nothing that is unworthy of acceptance. There is nothing taken on 'faith'. There is nothing that I cannot endure. I am capable of enjoying the moment, of somehow enduring what others find unendurable by finding something pleasant in it. I can smile with equanimity and say that I never did mind the little things, and mean it. Does that make me a masochist? A realist? A hedonist? A sinner?

Whatever it makes me, I cannot evade the awareness that I sometimes make others uncomfortable with my sensory perceptions of reality. Why the sensual makes people so uncomfortable, I do not know. I do not understand. Do I need to change? Can I change? All I know of the world is what I have experienced, and I experience it through my senses. My senses are acute, not corrupt. How can I deaden them, except to retreat into myself, into the bubble-world of the life of the mind? And with my vivid, multi-sensory imagination, would retreat make me any less a sensual, pleasure-centric creature?

What is so wrong with being aware of the world, with enjoying it? What is wrong with being sensitive to shades of colour, to the subtlty of sounds like the patter of water, to the touch of someone's hand on my skin? What is wrong with swooning over my first bite into a ripe nectarine? Why is it wrong that I enjoy scents that others cannot smell? Why am I odd because I am transfixed by the flow of water from a bamboo pole, its drip into a granite bowl? It seems such a metaphor for life, that fountain, in a way that I cannot express in words. It simply is. Why don't others see/hear/taste/feel/smell it?

I do not know. I am passionately interested in knowing, in understanding why my being so sensually aware threatens others, why it makes me feel like a one-eyed man in the land of the blind, waiting to be stoned to death.

How not to help a friend who is depressed

I have a friend who is very dear to me. And he is going through a rough patch, and he is feeling down, and he has his good moments and his bad moments. I've tried knocking him out of his blues by attempting to awaken him to his senses, to the beauty of his surroundings. I've given him a book on meditation, The Calm Technique, a very clear, non-mystical book that makes mediative practice very accessible. I've sent cards, sent him puns via SMS, told him I love him and he is not alone. I don't know what else to do. I guess I don't understand depression--I don't really feel it, I suppose, because whenever I feel down, I just open myself to the beauty around me, and the cloud passes.

I suppose, where I am going with this, is that perhaps being a sensualist handicaps my abiltity to empathize with friends who are depressed.

I think I turned one of my friend's bad moments into a 'worse moment'. It makes me sad. I am feeling sorry for myself, my failure as a friend. I recognize it as a very selfish, self-absorbed thing, making this about me, instead of him. I should be feeling sad for him, and I am, but I am also feeling helpless, and that makes me a bit angry. I'm not very good at doing helpless... except in bed, and only if it is sexy ;)


[23:18] Amicus: I'm having a bad evening..I'd rather wait to discuss this when I'm in a better mood.
[23:19] Kayar: Which means it will never be discussed, which is quite alright. All you have to do is say you do not want to discuss it again, Amicus. That is what 'wait to discuss later', really means.
[23:19] Amicus: why can't you just take me at my word sometimes?
[23:21] Kayar: Because I have learned that you mean well, you have the best intentions, but you...you don't follow through with what you say you will do. Other things, other sexier or more pressing things, come up, and such things are buried.
[23:23] Kayar: Its ok, Amicus. Its not a bad thing, its how you are. And I love you just as you are.
[23:24] Kayar: You can pick this conversatoin up again, if you want to. But I have no expectations of that occurring. Ever.
[23:25] Amicus: Guess I should be glad you set your expectations so low
[23:25] Amicus: Especially after I specifically said today that I wanted to talk about things (or was it yesterday)
[23:25] Kayar: There is expectation, and there is acceptance. The former gets in the way of the latter.
[23:26] Kayar: You said you did. And then you didn't. And that is ok. *shrug*
[23:26] Kayar: When you really want to, you will.
[23:26] Amicus: umm, you were afk at the time I sent the messages ;)
[23:26] Amicus: and then I had to turn off my computer to deal with getting the computer done
[23:26] Kayar: And I am always just a phone call away. A promise I made, that if you called or messaged and really needed to talk, I would drop everything to be there for you.
[23:28] Amicus: I guess that's just it
[23:28] Amicus: I'm just completely trying to avoid it
[23:29] Kayar: I have no desire to influence you to do something you do not want.
[23:29] Kayar: I did it once, somehow, to our mutual regret.
[23:30] Kayar: Obviously, you need to talk to someone, and obviously, I am not that someone.
[23:30] Amicus: I knew I should have logged off when I said I was
[23:30] Amicus: Because this discussion is just getting me more and more frustrated
[23:31] Amicus: So goodnight.

Hetero Amity

What a painful thing it is to realize that I live in a world (or perhaps I should say, a society, since it really is hubris to use 'world' when my experience of it is so small) that devalues friendship. Friendship is a source of love and acceptance and communion. And yet, women are encouraged to see other women as mere competitors, and men as potential providers and mates. And men, they are encouraged to develop the same mindset. Their male friends are buddies with whom they jokingly compete, and women are objects to be desired. So it seems that friendships between men and women, even in this post-sexual revolution era, are awkward and easily discouraged. This, despite the fact that friendships between men and women provide amazing benefits. Men can express to women the thoughts and feelings that they would never express to other men, the thoughts and feelings that society considers weak and unmanly, and have them validated. And women, knowing economic independance and reproductive choice, can go to men with their thoughts and ideas, not as beggars and dependants, not merely tolerated as objects of sexual gratification, but appreciated as intellectual equals. Today, when a man and a woman meet in friendship, it is possible for us to meet as people, to touch the humanity in each other, to enjoy the exchange between different-yet-same that results in us receiving from each other something that could not have come from within us. And yet, conventional wisdom states that men and women cannot be friends, that sex gets in the way. What a sad thing that is. In my experience, the sexual tension only gets in the way if it goes unacknowledged. I am female, you are male, we are hetero. We could form a sexual union. Or not. But sex is not the root of our affinity, or is it? Ah, the power of a question that does not require an answer. It is enough simply for us to be aware, awake, open, perceptive, inquisitive. The answers, like the questions, come in their own time. One day, I hope the answer to the question "why can't men and women be friends?" will be moot.

Regardless, I'll continue with my hetero amity.